Her situation is the norm for most of the migrants who are currently traveling north. “Under these circumstances I have nowhere to go… I am scared: what can I do?” Morey told CNN. Like so many others, she cannot afford to pay for a transcontinental flight - much less for her entire family. Now, she feels she’s been thrown into limbo. In 2018 her family sold their home in Santa Teresa del Tuy, an impoverished town some 30 kilometers southeast of Caracas, for US$1500 to pay for the journey to Colombia. Morey, who is currently in Colombia, says a return to Venezuela is impossible. They aimed to travel first to the town of Necocli in Colombia, and then hike into Panama via the Darien Gap, a 100-kilometer stretch of jungle that is impassable by road.ĭespite the myriad dangers, 150,000 migrants have crossed on foot so far this year, according to Panamanian authorities. ![]() The journey that Morey, her husband Rodolfo and their three children planned would have been just that. Under the new US migration provision, any northbound migrant entering Panama or Mexico illegally will be ineligible from the program. Panama and Mexico form a geographical passageway for overland travelers coming from South America. ![]() Up to 180,000 Venezuelans have crossed the border over the past year, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Most live in other South American countries – there are more than two million in Colombia alone - but in recent months a growing number have started to head north to the US through Central America and Mexico, as living conditions deteriorate amid the Covid-19 pandemic and a global food crisis.Īs a result, the number of Venezuelans apprehended at the US southern border is ballooning. ![]() (Photo by PAUL RATJE / AFP) (Photo by PAUL RATJE/AFP via Getty Images) Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Imagesīiden admin to roll out plan to manage flow of Venezuelan migrants Del Rio Mayor Bruno Lozano said that the migrants were crowded in an area controlled by the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) beneath the Del Rio International Bridge, which carries traffic across the Rio Grande river into Mexico. The mayor of Del Rio, Texas declared a state of emergency on September 17 after more than 10,000 undocumented migrants, many of them Haitians, poured into the border city in a fresh test of President Joe Biden's immigration policy. ![]() US Customs and Border Protection agents guard the entrance to the Del Rio International Bridge, which is closed temporarily after an influx of migrants, at the US-Mexico border in Del Rio, Texas on September 17, 2021. They also point out that the new airport entry program favors the wealthy and well-connected - in other words, Venezuelans who can afford to fly northward in the comfort of an airplane. On Wednesday, the US announced that it is expanding Title 42 - a pandemic-era provision that allows migration officials to expel illegal migrants to Mexico on public health grounds - and unveiled a new program to allow some Venezuelan migrants to apply to arrive at US ports of entry by air with a cap of 24,000.īoth plans are designed to dissuade Venezuelans like Morey from attempting to enter illegally and dangerously overland through the US-Mexico border.īut many migrants who are already en route tell CNN that the Biden administration’s decision leaves them in agonizing limbo, after having already given up everything to begin the trek northward. “The news hit me like a bucket of cold water,” says Alejaidys Morey, a 30-year-old Venezuelan woman, who until this week was planning to start traveling towards the United States.
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